Month: January 2021

It’s time to renew your lease, and you’re faced with a rent increase. Here are 6 questions to review for help preparing you to negotiate any rent increase. […]

It’s a great idea for most people to have at least two bank accounts, checking and savings. More than that has these pros and cons. […]

It’s never too early or late to teach your kids how to handle their finances. These apps will help them learn how to spend, save, and share. […]

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more info read my disclosure.

Surprise! It’s been exactly six years since I started my journey to financial independence and started writing this blog (though I only took it public July 2018). Today I want to celebrate by reflecting on anything new I’ve learned in the last year since my 5 year anniversary post. 

As background, this is by far the longest time I have consistently done anything – and I mean anything. A job, a school, a hobby – anything 🙂 . So let’s get into why that might be, what I’ve learned, what’s changed, and answer a few reader questions as well!
What I’ve Learned
Blogging Is Way More Than Writing
Let’s start with a depressing truth that I had no idea about when I started this blog six years ago 🙂 . I thought blogging involved banging some words into a computer and pressing publish because that’s exactly what I did for years before taking this blog public. A private blog is exactly that – basically an online journal with nothing else involved.
Well it turns out that public blogging is a completely different beast. It involves writing, editing, photography, photo editing (or choosing stock photos), technical stuff and (if its monetized) advertising and affiliate challenges. Not to mention talking to your wonderful readers, which can be in the form of responding to comments or tweets, Instagram comments, DMs and Facebook messages.
On a related note, if you want, blogging can also involve posting on all of the social media sites I just mentioned. All this to say, it’s way more than just writing and the list of things blogging involves, can be infinite. I just included a list of the bits I’ve chosen to engage with above 🙂 .  So that was a huge misconception that I had, but let’s flip it on its head:
Blogging Is What You Make It
The positive side of the above is that you can do whatever you want on and around a blog. I’ve done this in that this blog and my social media accounts, are a catch all for all my random interests that never previously had a home. I used to post film reviews on Tumblr to an audience of 1, write restaurant reviews on my personal Facebook and send random thoughts into the Twitterverse.
Well now, that all is concentrated within my blog efforts (sorry, not sorry 😉 ). For example, I post film and food reviews on my Instagram (like the below) and finally have an outlet for all the book quotes I highlight on my Kindle (I post them on Twitter).

Luckily, I’ve heard from several people that they enjoy these seemingly random posts. I can now concentrate all the things I love doing, into one hobby because blogging is what you make it.
It can be anything you want. You don’t have to stay in your lane if you don’t want to and I feel very grateful that I discovered this about blogging. I now have an outlet for all the things that were previously bursting out of me without a home 🙂 .
Blogging Is A Long Game Skill
I saw a challenge on Instagram recently where artists re-do a drawing they created years earlier and after seeing those drawings side-by-side, I was struck by how much their craft had improved (though it was still good to begin with). This made me realize: We’re all still growing.
I may look at an artist or a blogger and think, “Damn! I wish I was as good as them!” but I’m not just comparing my starting point to someone else’s middle or end point, but I’m also not acknowledging that we all continue to get better if we work at something.
I think my writing has improved a lot since my first few posts. They are embarrassingly still up on this site and I will keep them up to hopefully give that same ah-ha moment to others (just as these Instagram artists gave me) and also to give an honest account of my journey (writing and financial independence-wise).
These are the words I wrote at that time of my life and changing them to be more polished (or orderly…or clear 😉 ) seems disingenuous to me. The point of this blog is to catalog my journey, in all of its unclear and chaotic glory 😉 .
Similar to improving a writing skill in general, I think blogging is also a skill that gets better with time and me thinking that it was static and that I’m either good or bad, was silly of me. I think I’m better at this now, than I was six years ago, and I (hopefully) will be even better six months from now. There is no end-point to growing skills, just constant improvement and that’s exciting to me 🙂 .
Blogger Burnout Is Legit
I had never experienced blogger or writer burn out until I attempted (and won!!!) NaNoWriMo this November. That was by design, since I chose my weekly posting schedule based on how often I had produced blog posts the previous year. It was an anti-schedule in the same way my budget is actually an anti-budget based on my averages from the previous year.
Well, now I’ve felt that white hot heat of burnout creeping onto me and I’m happy it occurred at the end of me basically being on a writing frenzy, that then allowed me to take a bit of a break from writing. My writing stores were almost depleted and they needed some days (or maybe weeks 😉 …) of napping and reading and recuperating to get back to full capacity.
I was curious when I attempted that challenge, if I would even be able to do it since I only usually write when I feel inspired to do so – and that feeling does not emerge on any type of schedule 🙂 . Some weekends I would write 3 full posts and others would involve a 0 word count.
I can’t predict what my creative juices are going to do, but it’s good to know that they can be wrangled a little bit. After almost a month of writing more than I basically ever have before, it was only at the end that the words stopped flowing naturally, and that might have been partially because of the stress of seeing that big deadline looming only days away.
So, I can now personally confirm that burnout, even from a hobby, is legit. Let’s see what other silly things I confirm during the rest of my retirement 🙂 .
I Still Don’t Want To Write A Book
A few people have been asking me to write a book. One is actually a publisher and another works with a literary agent they think I would get along with. I’ve also heard from several readers that they would like me to take on a book endeavor. And even though I am deeply flattered that anyone would want to read my words in a more permanent format, I don’t currently want to do it 🙂 .
I’ve joked that I never say never…except about having kids 🙂 . But, similarly to how helping care for my baby cousin for 3 weeks even further solidified my decision to not have kids, NaNoWriMo only further entrenched my desire to not write a book.
Writing with a deadline was difficult enough, even though I chose to do it 😉 . Adding all the things that publishing a book requires, like editors and sales pressure and the constant marketing needed to make back a book’s advance, on top of writing on a deadline, sounds like a nightmare to me.
It sounds like the opposite of fun and I’m all about fun at this point in my life 🙂 . I’m curious if years of retirement will later change my mind on this front and make me welcome such a challenge, but this is where I stand for now.
Answering Your Questions
I asked on Twitter and Instagram if y’all had any questions for me and here’s what I got back:
How do you blog? Do you draft on paper, on your site? How do you get ideas?
I try to write my stream of consciousness thoughts in Evernote. I have the app on my phone and my computer. Writing there is easier than writing on paper and then transcribing it into WordPress. Once I have enough rough sentences that explain what I want to talk about, I paste them into WordPress and write the actual sentences there 🙂 .
However, some ideas are more visual and I need to put pen to paper, so then I do use a notebook and then transfer the info into WordPress. WordPress is where I write my official drafts though. Evernote and paper are just for vague thoughts.
My ideas just come to me – sometimes at inopportune times, like when I’m trying to drift off to sleep 🙂 . Other times, it’s sparked by a reader asking me a question and realizing other people might have the same query and benefit from the answer. At times, a thought comes to me when I’m washing dishes or staring at the sky while lounging outside – they come at random times and I try to write them down in Evernote immediately before they drift away.
Luckily, I have never been hard pressed for ideas. I have over a hundred drafts in my WordPress and lots of ideas in my project management platform Asana. If I have just a general post idea, I put it as a title, along with my other ideas there that I keep sorted by category in a visual fashion – it helps me keep everything organized in my mind. This is what that looks like:

What’s the best platform to get started blogging?
Like I mentioned, I blog through WordPress and have Bluehost as my hosting provider because they were the cheapest. I chose the cheapest option because I didn’t know if I’d like blogging publicly, so I was hedging my risk, but I regret that decision now.
The one thing a host is supposed to do in my eyes, is stay up, and my site goes down monthly because of Bluehost. I’ve discussed it with them multiple times and there’s been no solution, so if I continue to blog after October 2021 (when I’m reassessing blogging’s role in my retirement), I’ll switch hosts to a much more expensive, but reliable solution.
What would you still do the same or what would you change on your journey?
I’m on the fence about this one. I ask myself “Would I have taken the blog public sooner? Would I have stopped lurking on social media sooner?” I think the answer to the former is no and the latter is yes.
I think writing the blog for 3.5 years privately helped me figure out my voice and grow and not be overwhelmed with learning to FIRE and blog at the same time. I usually tackle one new skill at a time. I did this with FIRE, then keto, and then blogging, which I think has helped me to not get overwhelmed with multiple things and give up as a result.
Does blogging provide you income?
Some? Yes. Enough to make a serious impact on my finances or make me rich? Fuck no 🙂 . This is especially true when the dollars are translated to dollars per hour. For example, see this tweet from August:

#Blogging is the best way to make money FAST💰! I did it and YOU can too! Here’s what I’ve made👀:Y1: $0Y2: $0Y3: $0Y4: $0Y5: -$800Y6: $1,600Blogging is the ultimate get rich quick scheme!!!…as long as rich = $5.71/hr and quick = years🤣🤣🤣.
— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) August 30, 2020

I broke everything down in my annual income post here, but over the last six years, I’ve earned $0.26 a hour from this blog. And that amount does not account for all the time I spend on social media 😉 or other blog-related things – just the time I was writing the actual posts. If I factor everything that goes into the blog into this calculation, I suspect I’m making like a penny an hour – you know, life changing stuff 🙂 .
Conclusion
And that’s it! I’ve promised that I’ll continue writing weekly until my 1 year retirement anniversary in October. After that, I’ll reassess the place blogging has in my life, but based on how I feel right now, I’m hopeful that I’ll want to keep writing and will celebrate many blog anniversary milestones with y’all to come 🙂 . Thank you so much for being here 🙂 !
What’s a hobby that you’ve done for many years? […]

This post may contain affiliate links. For more info read my disclosure.

I’m here to tell you the real truth. FIRE Blogging is a scam. It’s the only way to ‘retire early’ and I know the secret of how you can do it too!

All you have to do is be like me: Write a blog for free for 3.5 years. Then take it public and make -$117.09 writing it for another year. Then monetize it and make -$839 the next year. THEN in your 6th year of writing make $2,070.75 of profit and live on that. It’s super simple!
Just do daily work for 6 years and make a profit of $1,114.66 total: $185.78 a year or $0.26 an hour. It’s foolproof! It has almost as good of a return as an MLM 😉 !

Always Sunny tellin’ it like it is.
Obviously, I’m completely joking. FIRE blogging generally would be a horrible plan to fund a retirement – or any lifestyle. I explained in this post about how blogging has turned out to be my dream job that it also pays basically no money. So then, why does it seem like the only way to retire early is to have a huge FIRE blog?
The Big Blogger ‘Camera Obscura’
As someone who was a lurker and reader in the FIRE community for years before peeking my head out and then raising my hand and then, years later, finally joining it, I think I can see this situation from both sides. Before I was a part of this community, I would see the same 5 bloggers or so, quoted in every mainstream article about FIRE. And those 5 bloggers had retired years ago, but also made a substantial amount from their blogs. And this is a weird tension.
More popular bloggers are by definition going to be making more money because of their larger audiences, so the bloggers I was more likely to hear about, are by definition bigger, money making bloggers. To put this into perspective, we actually hear from a relatively small percentage of actual early retirees because most (like my Mom) don’t have blogs. They’re just living their retired lives 🙂 .
Also, as I mentioned above, most people who have blogs, (retirees included) make basically no money from it. So FIRE bloggers that are big enough to be mentioned in mainstream media, are already usually a subset of two groups: retirees and bloggers who make money.
They are outliers, but because they are most of what we see, we can point to them and say “See! That’s the only way to retire early – to have a blog that shows people how to retire early!” It seems like the people who sell a book for a lot of money about how to sell a book for a lot of money. It’s a weird cyclical conversation that gives me pyramid scheme vibes. And this can appear to be the case, even if a FIRE blog in general (or the income from a blog) was not a part of the person’s original retirement plan.
Blogging Is Not A Great Income Plan
Putting aside the outliers for a second, the truth is that it’s actually quite rare to make any money from a blog and even more rare to make enough to live on. Income from a blog is also very unstable and is one of the first things to drop during a recession – marketing and advertising budgets get slashed, as we saw in March.
For example, the ad revenue from this site hasn’t yet recovered almost a year later. Some companies, understandably, started advertising less and other companies with affiliate programs I use cut the (already small) commissions or even lowered them to 0%. Also, unlike a salary, these changes can happen at any time. There is no guarantee you’ll make money from month to month.
Making Money From A FIRE Blog
So blogging in general is not a great plan if you’re looking to fund your lifestyle, but my situation in particular seems weirder because this is apparently a FIRE blog (or so it’s been called by others 😉 ). It’s basically a blog about me and I’m on FIRE, soooo I guess technically it’s a FIRE blog, though I’m sure that’s not apparent by the random topics I cover each week. I just write about whatever I feel like banging into this computer on a Wednesday morning, which often has little to do with money or financial independence in particular 🙂 .
But now I’m retired and I make a little money off of this blog. This is strange because I assume y’all are here reading this BECAUSE I was on the path to FIRE. If I was just some woman without a goal talking about random things every week, I imagine this would be far less interesting to you (let me know if I’m wrong in the comments 😉 ).
So it’s weirdly circular like the ouroboros below – the serpent that eats itself. This blog is fairly popular because I was on the path to retirement and now after 6 years, I’m making a little money off of this blog for that same reason.

That doesn’t look comfortable bro.
I’m obviously not rolling in the dough from blogging, but after all these years, I am making a little money from this blog and that feels weird and meta to me since it’s a blog about my money journey…which is now paying me a little for my time.
The meta weirdness of it was one of the reasons I was completely against monetizing this site in any way for 4.5 years. That and because I wasn’t sure it could be done in a way that didn’t make me feel weird or sleazy (Spoiler: It can 🙂 )
So talking about the journey is now partially funding the journey. Super meta. It would have been so much simpler if random other things I like to do were what after years of effort turned a profit, but alas, I’m too lazy to have more than one big hobby at a time 🙂 .
A ‘Pure’ Retirement
If you’re looking for a ‘pure’ case study of people who have made money in retirement (as it seems most do), but are NOT using that money so they can test if their original plan would have worked, check out Millennial Revolution. They created a separate portfolio where they stash their blog, book and other retirement earnings in order to see if their original $1 million CAD portfolio would have sustained them without the extra. So far it has.

I didn’t mean to have two images of Danny DeVito in his tighty whiteys in this post, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbled. Always Sunny is too iconic.
I am not a ‘pure’ case study for several reasons – one of which is that being open to and most likely accidentally making money, was always part of my plan – it’s one of the two levers (flexible spending and flexible earnings) that make me feel comfortable pulling the plug at 30 with an 100% stock portfolio.
I never claimed that my $500,000 would sustain me forever – this is an experiment with a lot of contingencies, but also an acknowledgement that – just like any retirement under the wrong set of circumstances – it could totally fail. However, failure has never really been my concern. And if failure is also defined by making money accidentally, I was almost 100% likely to fail.
So, in case you’re curious, I’m not trying to be a ‘pure’ case study and separate out my portfolios because:
It would mess with my Roth IRA Conversion Ladder that I’m using to access my after-tax money before age 59.5
It would make my taxes more expensive (for no good reason) and more complicated
Most importantly: I’m lazy
The Internet Retirement Police
But what about the inevitable pushback? My partner has declared that he is a card carrying member of the IRP – the internet retirement police – and he says that the cultural perception or definition of a word is what it means, regardless of if that is true or accurate based on a dictionary. For example, the use of the word “literally,” which now means the exact opposite based on real world use.
While the FIRE space is trying to redefine ‘retirement’ as quitting your full-time job or doing whatever you want with your time, the stereotype and cultural definition of retirement is still being old and sitting on a beach and doing nothing that could possibly resemble work.
This is currently the case even though it’s not an accurate reflection of how older retirees spend their time. Most older retirees make money after quitting their full-time job either from necessity or desire. But how do we clarify the lack of facts behind these stereotypes and how does making money from a FIRE blog in retirement factor in?
Conclusion
So I’m retired and I make money from this blog. The small amount I’ve made is not what allowed me to retire early (as I try to make clear by sharing all my numbers) and any money I might make going forward, is not what will allow me to stay retired (the hundreds of thousands I saved before quitting are doing the heavy lifting 😉 ).
And now that I think about it, the fact that I’m deciding in October if I’ll reduce the frequency of posting here or even stop blogging all together, is just another example of how this income is not key to my plans before or during retirement. I don’t need it and I didn’t count on it or ever imagine that I’d even make it since, as I’ve said, a majority of blogs never make much money and I’m a realist 🙂 . However, even though I didn’t factor this accidental income into my plans, I did suspect from looking around at other early retirees, that I would possibly earn some money in retirement – I just didn’t know from what.
Because of my hopefully 70 year retirement timeline, I’ve always been open to making money in the future. I was never going to blindly pull 4% of my starting portfolio every year and see what happened. Flexibility is at the heart of why I feel comfortable quitting this young: flexibility to spend less and earn some money if needed.
Anyway, enough about me. I don’t have a solution or answer to this weird meta-problem we have in this community, but I did want to talk about it because the situation is just that: Weird. I hope my rambling thoughts can start a discussion about this strange reality and how we can all handle it going forward.
What do you think about FIRE blogs making money after retirement?  […]

This post may contain affiliate links. For more info read my disclosure.

I’m here to tell you the real truth. FIRE Blogging is a scam. It’s the only way to ‘retire early’ and I know the secret of how you can do it too!

All you have to do is be like me: Write a blog for free for 3.5 years. Then take it public and make -$117.09 writing it for another year. Then monetize it and make -$839 the next year. THEN in your 6th year of writing make $2,070.75 of profit and live on that. It’s super simple!
Just do daily work for 6 years and make a profit of $1,114.66 total: $185.78 a year or $0.26 an hour. It’s foolproof! It has almost as good of a return as an MLM 😉 !

Always Sunny tellin’ it like it is.
Obviously, I’m completely joking. FIRE blogging generally would be a horrible plan to fund a retirement – or any lifestyle. I explained in this post about how blogging has turned out to be my dream job that it also pays basically no money. So then, why does it seem like the only way to retire early is to have a huge FIRE blog?
The Big Blogger ‘Camera Obscura’
As someone who was a lurker and reader in the FIRE community for years before peeking my head out and then raising my hand and then, years later, finally joining it, I think I can see this situation from both sides. Before I was a part of this community, I would see the same 5 bloggers or so, quoted in every mainstream article about FIRE. And those 5 bloggers had retired years ago, but also made a substantial amount from their blogs. And this is a weird tension.
More popular bloggers are by definition going to be making more money because of their larger audiences, so the bloggers I was more likely to hear about, are by definition bigger, money making bloggers. To put this into perspective, we actually hear from a relatively small percentage of actual early retirees because most (like my Mom) don’t have blogs. They’re just living their retired lives 🙂 .
Also, as I mentioned above, most people who have blogs, (retirees included) make basically no money from it. So FIRE bloggers that are big enough to be mentioned in mainstream media, are already usually a subset of two groups: retirees and bloggers who make money.
They are outliers, but because they are most of what we see, we can point to them and say “See! That’s the only way to retire early – to have a blog that shows people how to retire early!” It seems like the people who sell a book for a lot of money about how to sell a book for a lot of money. It’s a weird cyclical conversation that gives me pyramid scheme vibes. And this can appear to be the case, even if a FIRE blog in general (or the income from a blog) was not a part of the person’s original retirement plan.
Blogging Is Not A Great Income Plan
Putting aside the outliers for a second, the truth is that it’s actually quite rare to make any money from a blog and even more rare to make enough to live on. Income from a blog is also very unstable and is one of the first things to drop during a recession – marketing and advertising budgets get slashed, as we saw in March.
For example, the ad revenue from this site hasn’t yet recovered almost a year later. Some companies, understandably, started advertising less and other companies with affiliate programs I use cut the (already small) commissions or even lowered them to 0%. Also, unlike a salary, these changes can happen at any time. There is no guarantee you’ll make money from month to month.
Making Money From A FIRE Blog
So blogging in general is not a great plan if you’re looking to fund your lifestyle, but my situation in particular seems weirder because this is apparently a FIRE blog (or so it’s been called by others 😉 ). It’s basically a blog about me and I’m on FIRE, soooo I guess technically it’s a FIRE blog, though I’m sure that’s not apparent by the random topics I cover each week. I just write about whatever I feel like banging into this computer on a Wednesday morning, which often has little to do with money or financial independence in particular 🙂 .
But now I’m retired and I make a little money off of this blog. This is strange because I assume y’all are here reading this BECAUSE I was on the path to FIRE. If I was just some woman without a goal talking about random things every week, I imagine this would be far less interesting to you (let me know if I’m wrong in the comments 😉 ).
So it’s weirdly circular like the ouroboros below – the serpent that eats itself. This blog is fairly popular because I was on the path to retirement and now after 6 years, I’m making a little money off of this blog for that same reason.

That doesn’t look comfortable bro.
I’m obviously not rolling in the dough from blogging, but after all these years, I am making a little money from this blog and that feels weird and meta to me since it’s a blog about my money journey…which is now paying me a little for my time.
The meta weirdness of it was one of the reasons I was completely against monetizing this site in any way for 4.5 years. That and because I wasn’t sure it could be done in a way that didn’t make me feel weird or sleazy (Spoiler: It can 🙂 )
So talking about the journey is now partially funding the journey. Super meta. It would have been so much simpler if random other things I like to do were what after years of effort turned a profit, but alas, I’m too lazy to have more than one big hobby at a time 🙂 .
A ‘Pure’ Retirement
If you’re looking for a ‘pure’ case study of people who have made money in retirement (as it seems most do), but are NOT using that money so they can test if their original plan would have worked, check out Millennial Revolution. They created a separate portfolio where they stash their blog, book and other retirement earnings in order to see if their original $1 million CAD portfolio would have sustained them without the extra. So far it has.

I didn’t mean to have two images of Danny DeVito in his tighty whiteys in this post, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbled. Always Sunny is too iconic.
I am not a ‘pure’ case study for several reasons – one of which is that being open to and most likely accidentally making money, was always part of my plan – it’s one of the two levers (flexible spending and flexible earnings) that make me feel comfortable pulling the plug at 30 with an 100% stock portfolio.
I never claimed that my $500,000 would sustain me forever – this is an experiment with a lot of contingencies, but also an acknowledgement that – just like any retirement under the wrong set of circumstances – it could totally fail. However, failure has never really been my concern. And if failure is also defined by making money accidentally, I was almost 100% likely to fail.
So, in case you’re curious, I’m not trying to be a ‘pure’ case study and separate out my portfolios because:
It would mess with my Roth IRA Conversion Ladder that I’m using to access my after-tax money before age 59.5
It would make my taxes more expensive (for no good reason) and more complicated
Most importantly: I’m lazy
The Internet Retirement Police
But what about the inevitable pushback? My partner has declared that he is a card carrying member of the IRP – the internet retirement police – and he says that the cultural perception or definition of a word is what it means, regardless of if that is true or accurate based on a dictionary. For example, the use of the word “literally,” which now means the exact opposite based on real world use.
While the FIRE space is trying to redefine ‘retirement’ as quitting your full-time job or doing whatever you want with your time, the stereotype and cultural definition of retirement is still being old and sitting on a beach and doing nothing that could possibly resemble work.
This is currently the case even though it’s not an accurate reflection of how older retirees spend their time. Most older retirees make money after quitting their full-time job either from necessity or desire. But how do we clarify the lack of facts behind these stereotypes and how does making money from a FIRE blog in retirement factor in?
Conclusion
So I’m retired and I make money from this blog. The small amount I’ve made is not what allowed me to retire early (as I try to make clear by sharing all my numbers) and any money I might make going forward, is not what will allow me to stay retired (the hundreds of thousands I saved before quitting are doing the heavy lifting 😉 ).
And now that I think about it, the fact that I’m deciding in October if I’ll reduce the frequency of posting here or even stop blogging all together, is just another example of how this income is not key to my plans before or during retirement. I don’t need it and I didn’t count on it or ever imagine that I’d even make it since, as I’ve said, a majority of blogs never make much money and I’m a realist 🙂 . However, even though I didn’t factor this accidental income into my plans, I did suspect from looking around at other early retirees, that I would possibly earn some money in retirement – I just didn’t know from what.
Because of my hopefully 70 year retirement timeline, I’ve always been open to making money in the future. I was never going to blindly pull 4% of my starting portfolio every year and see what happened. Flexibility is at the heart of why I feel comfortable quitting this young: flexibility to spend less and earn some money if needed.
Anyway, enough about me. I don’t have a solution or answer to this weird meta-problem we have in this community, but I did want to talk about it because the situation is just that: Weird. I hope my rambling thoughts can start a discussion about this strange reality and how we can all handle it going forward.
What do you think about FIRE blogs making money after retirement?  […]

Are you all ready for this? It’s one of my favorite days of the year! I just spent an hour entering data in Quicken, then another thirty minutes analyzing it. It’s time to run some numbers.
How well did I do with my financial goals last year? Was I able to cut back on dining out? (Hint: There was a global pandemic. What do you think?) Did my net worth rise or fall? Let’s take a look.
First, let’s review where I was at the end of 2019.
Quite simply, I was a mess. Objectively, my life was good, but subjectively it was a disaster. My mental health was in shambles. Depression and anxiety were crippling me and truly affecting my relationships with other people. I felt like I was in the middle of a prolonged car crash.
The good news is that, for the most part, 2020 was much better from a personal perspective. Yes, I understand that 2020 sucked for a lot of people. And it was the most tumultuous year our country has seen in a generation. But for me, personally, the year was mostly good. I’ll explain why this is in a bit, but first lets look at the Big Picture.
My Net Worth
Here’s my end-of-year net worth from each of the past three years. (These numbers do not include the value of my business or this website.)
At the end of 2018, my net worth was $1,334,227 — a 15.2% decrease from 2017.
At the end of 2019, my net worth was $1,437,543 — a 7.7% increase from 2018.
At the end of 2020, my net worth was $1,373,233 — a 4.5% decrease from 2019.
Now, on paper a decrease of net worth amounting to $64,310 might seem scary. Maybe it’s because I’m in a better mental space than last year, but it doesn’t bother me. This may also be due to the fact that I realize most of that drop comes from Zillow’s valuation of our home.
At the end of 2019, Zillow said our country cottage was worth $495,749. At the end of 2020, the home was valued at $437,127, which is a drop of $58,622.

Yes, I realize using Zillow to track our home value is…erratic. And it leads to fluctuations like this. Still, I feel like it’s a solid enough source for home values, and it gives me some sort of number to go on.

That’s one way of looking at it. But looked at another way, things are a little dicier. You see, I currently live off of my investments. Most of those investments are in retirement accounts, which I can’t touch (unless I want a tax penalty) for another eight years. At the start of 2019, my regular taxable investment accounts contained $269,264. Today, they have $197,117. That there could also be my drop in net worth.
One thing is certain, though. That $197,117 isn’t enough to get me to age 59-1/2 at my current level of spending. I need to spend less, earn more, or (preferably) both.
Now, let’s look at some of the numbers in greater detail.

NoteI’m still tracking my money in Quicken 2007. I continue to try new money apps but none of them is as good as this clunky old program.
Having said that, I didn’t track my spending from May 12th to October 1st last year. I wasn’t spending anything, so I thought the process was pointless. (In retrospect, I wish I had continue to track the numbers because they would have made a good baseline.) Because of this break, I have no way to know exactly what I spent over the course of the entire year. But I do have complete numbers for the first quarter (mostly pre-COVID) and the last quarter.

Food Spending
A year ago, I declared that my financial goal for 2020 was to spend less on food. I’m pleased to report that I achieved this goal although I had some help from a global pandemic. The COVID crisis kept me (and most people) at home. Yes, we did eat out now and then, but it was rare. And it was outside, when possible.
Here’s my food spending from 2020.
From January to March, I spent $1700.91 on food (or about $566.97 per month). Of this, $1189.28 ($396.42 per month) was on groceries and $498 ($166 per month) was on dining out.
From October to December, I spent $1751.26 on food (or about $583.75 per month). Of this, $1427.81 ($475.94 per month) was on groceries and $323.45 (107.82 per month) was on dinging out.) I should also note that the bulk of this food spending was in December ($663.32 on groceries, $92.00 on our only restaurant meal, and $755.62 total).
So, yay! I met my goal! My monthly food spending dropped from $1053.28 in 2019 to $575.36 in 2020. If I had tracked the stats during the middle of the year, that number would be even lower.
To put things into perspective, here’s a tiny spreadsheet comparing my monthly food spending over the last four years. Numbers from 2019 are incomplete. And numbers from last year are for the first quarter and laster quarter combined. (Again, data is missing for the middle of the year.)

That looks like some solid progress to me.
And you know what? I’m willing to bet that a big part of that drop in spending is because I drank less alcohol in 2020. Technically, I don’t want my alcohol spending to appear as “food”. I have a separate category for booze. In reality, I’m lazy and I rarely separate beer and wine purchases from other grocery purchases. So, I think some of that drop in food spending is because I was drinking less.
Let’s talk a little more about that.
Booze Spending
Perhaps the biggest win for me in 2020 — financially and otherwise — was my decreased dependence on alcohol.
I had two stints last year during which I was alcohol free: January 1st to mid-February, then Independence Day to Halloween. And since I “fell off the wagon” at the end of October, I’ve done fairly good about minimizing my alcohol intake. (I refuse to keep whiskey or wine in the house. If I’m truly craving a beer, I drive to the store to buy one. Or two. This policy has really helped me cut down on how much I consume.)
In 2019, I was spending roughly $200 each month on alcohol. In 2018, this was closer to $300 per month. Holy cats! In 2020, I spent zero on alcohol for half the year. During the six months I tracked my expenses last year, I spent a total of $227.07 on booze — $37.85 per month.

My marijuana expense was also down. Pot is cheaper than alcohol in the first place, but I was also trying to reduce my use of weed while I was trying to cut out alcohol. I spent maybe $20 a month on the stuff in 2020.

As an added benefit, by cutting out alcohol I was better able to lose weight. I’m currently down more than 25 pounds since July. (I want to lose another five or ten pounds, then turn my attention to building strength once more.)
Best of all? My mental health improved! In September and October, after being alcohol-free for a few months, I was enjoying peak performance. I was happier and more productive than I have been in years. This benefit to reduced alcohol use is the best benefit of all and the one most likely to keep me away from the stuff.
Now, as I mentioned, I’ve resumed drinking some. I’ve had four beers in the past week, for instance (including New Year’s). For now, I’m okay with this. My mental and physical health seem great at this level of consumption. But there’s still a chance I’ll opt to give up the stuff completely for an extended period of time. (I have a sticky note on my work computer with a question that Tom asked me in October: “What’s the postive for you in using alcohol and pot?” Great question.)
Big Spending
The sorest spot in my budget over the past few years has been big expenses. In 2015, I spent $35,000 on an RV. In 2017, we sold the condo and bought this country cottage, then poured money into repairs and upgrades. In 2018, we spent more on remodeling.
Well, last year didn’t have any major home expenses but I did replace my Mini Cooper, at long last.
At the end of June, I spent $40,000 on a 2019 Mini Countryman SE All4. This seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, the purchase wasn’t the smartest move. The car is fine — it’s not great but it’s not bad — and I enjoy driving it. I especially like that most of my driving is now electric (and that I’m averaging 53 miles per gallon.) But I don’t drive often enough or value vehicles enough to justify having spent this much on a car.
I don’t want to say this was a dumb move…but I think it was probably a dumb move.
Time will tell.
Looking ahead, 2021 should have zero large expenses. I hope. We’ve performed all of the repairs and upgrades we need to do on the house. (I say that, yet I’m worried about the foundation settling.) I just bought a car. My health is good. We have no big trips planned. Our food spending seems to be under control. I have high hopes that 2021 will, at long last, be a year without major outlays. Fingers crossed!
Final Thoughts
Honestly, nothing else about my spending worries me. There were a couple of categories that saw increases last year — books and movies — but this doesn’t bother me. COVID has led me to read more and to watch more shows. These forms of entertainment are relatively inexpensive. All the same, I’ll keep an eye out to be sure my book and movie spending doesn’t become problematic.
Here are a couple of final thoughts after crunching the numbers.
My new electric hybrid is amazing when it comes to fuel costs. It has an electric range of roughly 16 miles. That doesn’t seem like much, but it coveres 90% of my driving. I’m getting 53 miles per gallon overall. I last put gas in the tank on November 8th and it’s still half full. (The downside is that it only gets about 23 mpg when using the combustion engine.) My fuel expense has dropped from $100/month to $20/month.
My spending on streaming services boomed at the end of 2020, but part of that is because I’m researching and writing a GRS article on the subject. Three TV-replacement services totals $200/month! But I only had those for one month. (And, in retrospect, I should have made them a business expense.)
The bottom line? Last year was pretty good for me. I’m certainly starting 2021 in a much better mental state than I started 2020. Things aren’t perfect but are they ever? I have a good life, an amazing partner in Kim, and I’m currently enjoying the work I’m doing here at Get Rich Slowly and at my newly-revived personal site.
Looking ahead, I don’t have any specific personal financial goals. I guess that I want to increase my income. To that end, I’ll continue channeling my renewed focus on this website.
2020 was a mixed bag for the business side of Get Rich Slowly. The initial expenses in re-acquiring the site have been paid, so my costs were a lot lower last year. That said, so was revenue. The site earned something like $72,000 (before expenses) in 2019. In 2020, that fell to about $30,000.
Some of my colleagues make big bucks from their blogs. I don’t. I’m okay with that, though, because I recognize that many of the decisions I make are deliberately reader-centric, which means I’m foregoing easy money. Still, it would be nice to boost revenue so that I could draw income from the work I do here. Let’s see what that looks like going forward…
Okay, it’s your turn. How was your 2020? […]

Personal finance advice is a lot like other fads and memes on the internet – some ideas get exceptionally popular, there’s a backlash (sometimes deservedly, sometimes not), and then there’s a reversion to the mean.
Many of the ideas are often, at their core, good. Like all ideas, they evolve and mature. Sometimes that means those ideas become a bit more niche and specific. Sometimes they become broader and more inclusive. (If you want a good example outside of money, look at religion – there are very broad inclusive religious beliefs and there are very niche specific and exclusive ones.)
What’s great about financial advice is that there is no right answer. It’s valuable to consider it all and take the ideas that will help you improve your financial life.
For the last few years, the FIRE “movement” has been extremely popular. The idea of retiring early and escaping the rat race is intoxicating. Most recently, there’s been a bit of a backlash (rightfully, I think) criticizing the movement. (FIRE stands for financial independence, retire early)
I’ve always seen the FIRE movement as a net positive. I’m not “in” it so I don’t see all of its parts (and thus can’t speak to the sexism and judgment and whatnot) but if you take the good and leave the bad, you’re better off for it.
And that’s what you should be doing with all financial advice on the internet – take the good, discard the bad – here’s why:
Take the Best, Discard the Rest
Nothing is one size fits all. It never is and we all know it.
The beauty of the internet is that it can expose you to the stories of many experiences and many backgrounds. There’s, of course, a bit of self-selection involved. You will only get the experiences of people with access to technology, desire to share, and the means to spend time writing, recording, and publishing those experiences. But you get way more than you would if you stuck to TV, books, or magazines.
This means you can read a lot of different stories and cherry-pick the best ideas that work for you.
There is no single best anything.
In its simplest form, FIRE is about saving as much as you can and investing it so you can retire early. It got popular in the most recent stock market run because it enabled many people to retire at really young ages. As it got popular, it developed sub-groups and certain characteristics became more extreme (not in a bad way, just more concentrated). You had those who celebrated extreme frugality, living off the grid, tiny homes, nomadic lifestyles, etc.
Frugality is always a good idea – until it isn’t. You want to save money but at what cost? Short term savings can mean longer-term costs. This is where your personal situation matters and you need to cherry-pick. It would be cheaper to sleep on a futon but your sleep may suffer – which has an impact on your life and productivity. That can impact your income. Perhaps you want to spend a little more on a bed that you’ll use for many years.
And many of the complaints about FIRE are valid too. It doesn’t take a genius to know that you can save more money if you earn more money. And you better get a little lucky with medical expenses.
In life, there’s no single right answer to every problem or single right way to do anything. You’re on a journey and you need to pick the tools and equipment that will get you there.
You Must Personalize It
I’ve gotten emails from readers who want specific advice for their situation. I never give it because I can’t possibly know the full situation and, honestly, I’m not qualified. That’s why you should work with a fee-only financial advisor. Free advice on the internet is just that – (potentially) worthless. 🙂
Another problem with free advice is that it’s not tailored to you. Even the seemingly simplest situation is extremely complicated.
But not everyone can afford a fee-only financial advisor and so when you read advice on the internet, you have to do the work of personalizing it. That’s the cost.
For example, common advice is to max out your Roth IRA and 401(k). This advice is “good” because it lowers your tax burden. But what if you can’t afford to max them out? What if your employer doesn’t offer a match on your 401(k) contributions or your plan is expensive with terrible options? What if you make too much to contribute to a Roth IRA? The list of What-Ifs is endless.
If you want to get it right, you need to invest more time reading and learning the reasoning behind that advice. You can’t blindly follow it because it was never written for your specific situation.
There’s No Fiduciary Duty
With financial advisors, there’s a fiduciary duty. They have to put your financial needs above theirs.
On the internet, there is no fiduciary duty. I’m not certified, I’m not licensed, and I’m also not giving you advice. We’re having a (one-sided) conversation over a coffee or a beer as you would with your friend. The site is supported by advertising, which means I get paid when you visit or when you sign up for various products, and some of those products aren’t going to work for you.
This site isn’t unique in that regard – that’s how the internet works. Much like on Facebook or Twitter, you get free stuff and, in return, the site makes money off your activity.
When you read reviews of products or services, the company publishing that review may make money when you sign up. We try to remain unbiased in our reviews (many are written by freelancers who are compensated for their time writing, not tied to the financial performance of the piece) but bias is everywhere. Writers may not want to be too negative because they don’t want the blowback.
There’s also the bias of exclusion – we tend not to write reviews of products that are obviously bad. We never reviewed Suze Orman’s prepaid debit cards (they had a $3 monthly fee!), which quietly disappeared after they were launched in the early 2000s.
You May be Listening to an Incompetent Bozo
I know I’m not a bozo… but you don’t.
I have zero formal education when it comes to personal finance. I have formal education in other things that are themselves hard but nothing really in the same domain (economics is close-ish but not really). I would not hire myself to create a financial plan and I am reticent to offer any kind of advice to friends and family.
I don’t know what I don’t know (this is my biggest worry) and sometimes I make mistakes. When I write on the Internet, I feel a different kind of responsibility to the reader. I want to get it correct, I want to get it complete, but I feel responsible only to get it right. It’s easy when you talk about something specific, like reviewing a product or discussing my mental models around money.
It’s harder if you want to discuss something much broader. If there is an omission, I trust the reader to do their own research and find it.
For example, investing is a very tricky subject because it, in a small way, depends a lot on the future. This is why many experts say invest in index funds – it’s a no-lose proposition. Index funds are cheap, you get the whole market, and they’re a safe choice. But what should your allocation be? How much in index funds versus bonds or other asset classes? You get rules of thumb. 120 minus your age. As you dig deeper, it gets more complicated – but most of the advice stops at “buy index funds” because that’s where the safe area is.
You have to do the work to fill in the blanks and not trust that the bozo you’re reading knows the whole picture. 🙂
Share it With a Friend
If there’s an idea that interests you but you’re not sure if you “get it” – tell a friend. Talk it over with someone you consider smarter than you on the subject. Just talking about it, and being forced to explain it, can help you better understand it.
This doesn’t have to be a friend you know in-person – it can be an internet friend. Someone whose background and ethics you know and trust. If your friend knows the particulars of your situation they could even guide you on how to fit this new idea into your financial plan. 
The idea could be wrong (I’ve written stuff that was incorrect loads of times) or your interpretation could be wrong. A lot of financial topics are complicated (perhaps on purpose!) but getting a second opinion can give you the confidence that it’s correct and that you understood it correctly. 
If you don’t have someone in your life that you can talk to you should still aim to get second opinions by reading books by actual, verifiable, experts. You should also follow several bloggers who have a wide range of opinions so that you can see the whole world of personal finance, not just one person’s view of things. This way you can pick and choose which ideas you most agree with. 
Don’t blindly follow any advice, much less advice on the Internet, and hopefully, this framework can help!
Summary
The internet makes financial information accessible to a lot more people, which is great. But it also comes from generally unknown sources which means you have to do your homework. As they say, you can’t believe everything you see on the internet. 
Your finances are extremely important and you should take care not to make important life-changing decisions based on an article you read – no matter where you read it. 
Use the internet for exposure to new ideas and general education, but back up your actual decisions with advice from someone whom you trust and who has your best interests at heart. 
Oh, and before you go, I want you to do all this with this post too.
Take the good, skip the bad, personalize it, and (most of all) share it with a friend! 🙂 […]